"What A Great Concept...Pity About The Execution Though"

Yoshi's Touch & Go for the DS started off as a demo showing off the unique abilities that the DS has to offer, and that is simply where is should have remained. While the ideas behind this game are interesting to say the least, their full potential is far from being realised, and there is nowhere near enough to this game to warrant buying it. Im not even sure if they added anything to the demo version before chucking a full price sticker on it and sucking in all us Yoshi fans.

GAMEPLAY - 5

The gameplay itself really isn't that bad. This is actually quite a fun game. So why the low score you may ask? Well, there is a serious lack in both variety and length that really hurts this game. When it gets right down to it, Yoshi's Touch and Go is simply two minigames presented in different ways. In the first, you guide Baby Mario as he falls slowly down through the sky, held up by three balloons. In an interesting display of innovation, you don't actually control the character. Rather, you alter the environment around him as he falls. Using the touch screen, you can create cloud lines to guide Baby Mario down a different path, generally lining him up so that he collects coins. Its not that simple though, as there are a number of enemies that get in his way as he falls. You must either guide Baby Mario past these baddies, or draw a circle around certain ones to create a bubble around them, turning them into a coin that can be tossed towards our falling infant. While greatly innovative, this mode will get old after just a few times, as you continue to do more or less the exact same thing again and again.

The games other mode takes place right after Baby Mario reaches the ground and lands on Yoshi's back at the end of the first version. Once again, you don't really control the character here, as Yoshi continually moves forward automatically. Rather, you click on the touch screen around him to shoot eggs into the sky. If an egg hits coins, they will be collected, and if it hits enemies, they will be defeated. You can once again draw cloud lines with the stylus, allowing yoshi to climb up over platform gaps and the like. One of the best innovations in this game is that you can blow into the touchscreen to clear all clouds away. There is something seriously cool about doing this the first few times, but it looses that soon enough. Yoshi builds up his arsenal of eggs by eating fruit, and you can tap him to make him jump. Once he gets to the end, your score from the two games combined is displayed in your efforts to get a high score.

And thats the game. No, seriously, thats it. While the game tries to disguise it with different modes like Score Attack, Marathon, Time Attack and Challenge, all you are doing is playing the same two mini-games over and over again. The real disappointment is that the game is really fun. If your reading this and still decide to get the game, you will think I'm nuts early on. But after a couple of days you will understand that there is very little lasting appeal to this game, despite it's truly interesting innovations.

GRAPHICS - 8

This game has a nice look to it. Everything is clear, crisp and vibrant and creates a very happy kind of feeling to it. To be honest, I can't really imagine this game looking any better and still maintaining its sense of style. It's nothing truly amazing, but it holds up as well as you would hope for.

SOUND - 7

The background music is cherry and uplifting on the start menu, relaxed and mysterious in the Baby Mario descent, and energetic and adventurous in Yoshi's level. There are only these three themes, with small sound effects like yoshi throwing an egg or Baby Mario falling into a coin added in. The tunes themselves though are quite good, and wouldn't be out of place in a -real- game. They actually fit what you are doing well enough, and compliment the happy graphical style of the game.

CHALLENGE - 8

This game is actually no walkover, and some of the high scores can take you many times to beat. The real challenge is putting up with the repetitive gameplay for long enough to actually beat all of those high scores though. Indeed, highscores represent the only real challenge, as the prospect of death should never be an issue. Still, if you are a purist that has to beat absolutely everything, there is challenge enough here, particularly if you want to try and get perfect scores.

REPLAYABILITY - 2

The greatest disappointment of this game. Fact of the matter is, you can pay this game for 15 minutes and see pretty much everything you will have seen after playing for weeks. This is a fun game, but what makes it a let down is that there is just not enough to do. This game will gather dust after just a couple of days, a week at best, and you will have little motivation to play it again. And its a crying shame that such a great idea wasn't put to proper use.

CONCLUSION

This game had a lot going for it. While most games on the DS could just as easily be on the GBA, this is one of the few games on the DS that would simply not work on any other platform. It started off as a demo, and the only real change to that seems to be the fact that they decided to make it a real game and charge people money for it. The options are so limited that the entire game could easily have just been two mini-games on Super Mario 64 DS. It still holds some short-term fun, and is worth picking up if you see it in a bargain bin, but Kirby Canvas Curse does everything this game does and actually gets it right. At the end of the day, this game has a terrific concept, but is very shallow indeed in terms of content.